still just a ski lift you can see it on this visit. if you just joined safari will mark and this is also you can see live from the russian capital top stories now on the saudi crisis of the focus on the power plant in japan dozens of reports said partial nuclear meltdown is under way while the country struggles to tackle the damage caused by the earthquake the death toll has risen to over four thousand as for the survivors and below zero temperatures a compounding the nightmare for over half a million people left displaced. as radiation levels continue to rise japanese authorities claim there's no imminent threat to people's health of the country track record of covering up past nuclear problems makes many people version of

events. and in libya pro-government forces a retaking more land from the rebels meanwhile the u.n. is set to discuss imposing a no fly zone over the country a measure opposed by most states and that's the situation in japan that serious the world's left with big questions about the future of nuclear power not nuclear physicist patterson and shares his thoughts on what we can learn from the ongoing events in japan that interview is next. today i'm talking to walt patterson who's an associate fellow at chatham house idle favorite author of a book on the power industry called keeping the lights on and thank you very much for talking to r.t. now the situation in japan is we've seen several explosions at the cushy mat nuclear power plant what do you think the chances are that we may see more and the

situation carrying on i'm sure that the people working on the site hope that they've got it under control but they seem to be releasing an awful lot of hydrogen from at least three reactors and now from a fuel point as well and hydrogen is an explosive gas if it's confined a mixed with air it produces it can produce very dramatic explosions as we've seen so that's clearly a. major concern for them but i think the explosion problem is almost the least of their problems at the moment because what it has done to the reactors we don't know we don't know who hasn't apparently damaged the containment or the reactor pressure vessels themselves although i gather there may be a hole in one of the containers and that you know too but what bothers me and i haven't heard any very good confirmation about it is what it is done to the actual contact between the control room and the reactor itself whether the with the dials

engages in the control room are now actually giving reliable information about what's happening inside the reactors particularly because the sensors for temperature and pressure and water level and so on in the turbulent conditions that have been happening in those reactors must be the sensors must themselves now be potentially unreliable which means that the engineers in the control room don't actually know what's going on in the reactors and what could be going on in those reactors and yours. the problem is that they may have water levels rising and falling they may have fuel exploding we know that they have had fuel exposed which has produced the reaction the reaction between the the molten metal cladding and the water that produces the hydrogen so they've certainly had some fuel damage they may well have fuel ceramic fuel pellets that are now also circulating through the core and that will be clogging up channels and generally generally changing the

configuration the geometry in the core and unless they're reacting unless the reactor engineers know what is going on they're liable to do something wrong they're liable to do the wrong thing that's what happened at the x. of the three mile island in the united states that the engine engineers who thought they were doing the right thing to protect the protect the core. open valves when they should have closed them and vice versa and wonder picks posing the core and causing a major meltdown and you've mentioned that the uranium rug in reactor number to receive a reg state in regard to direct a setting for a period of time how dangerous that well the rig the fuel fuel elements when they're running in the reactor with the chain reaction running the the buildup of radioactive waste in the fuel rods themselves gradually accumulates quite a sizeable infantry of very hot radioactive waste and when they talk about the

reactors all shutting down at the time of the earthquake which means that they shut down the chain reaction but you cannot shut down the radioactive waste and anything up to ten percent of the heat in the reactor core when it's when it's when it's running comes from the radioactive waste not from the chain reaction you can shut down the heat from the waste and that heat means that you have to keep taking the heat away or the temperature of the fuel rods goes up very fast and what has happened in i think all three units now is that the fuel has been at least partly exposed. such that it then allows its own temperature to go up until the metal cubes melt and the metal cubes melt and the little fuel pellets water just like a little sweetness fall fall down the uranium fall falls down into into the water and of course the problem that produces is that if anough of them fall together they can start up a chain reaction again and despite all this and what you're talking about

a sort of self-perpetuating scenario the governments in japan keep thank the safety data to find something for people to worry about do you think that's telling the whole tree i'm not sure they know the whole truth that's part of the problem i mean in the circumstance it would be bad enough if it were normal times but this is after an earthquake an enormous tsunami and the communication channels and the normal organization even of a society as organized as japan has taken a terrible hit so the fact that they are now faced with a problem like the nuclear problem when they already have more on their hands than anybody could possibly imagine with that with the earthquake and the aftermath of the tsunami but if it's brutally brutally difficult for the for that but for the government and for the people of japan and the rest of the world we always say that it's a pattern has a reputation as one of the world's most technologically advanced countries and yet they've been struggling to call these reactors out for days now what are the

factors at play that you think well i think one of the factors is that precisely the fact that the that this is a nuclear power is a very very complicated technology and its track record of actually dealing with some of the implications of the of the the inherent the inherent characteristics of this work of this type of reactor is not good i found last night an article that i wrote nearly forty years ago the scribing and intense controversy in the united states for both the performance precisely of this. so-called emergency cooling systems on water cooled reactors and the performance was criticized by independent experts in the us but the then nuclear establishment and us atomic energy commission waved the concerns aside and this was at a time when fukushima one was being built and the same with the same problem is

inherent in this kind of reactor the only kind of reactor that anybody is building now anywhere in the world these reactors were originally built as power plants for submarines and obviously the overall the overriding design criterion is that it has to be compact enough to fit inside the hull of a sudden marie and that means that it has to produce an enormous amount of heat in a very small you and the only way that it can do that is with very very high pressure water which means in turn that the walls of the reactor the boiler the reactor pressure vessel have to be twenty centimeters thick and this poses all kinds of safety problems if there is any possibility of the pressure being lost or even worse if the pressure vessel itself might happen to be breached. and these are the problems with these that engineers are now trying to cope with in japan some commentators than that but they are saying this is talking to look a lot like chinalco what do you think about that. i thought that we're still going

to be a long way short of a trip of a chernobyl here particularly for one reason that even if there were a major release of radioactivity from one or more of the reactors the the event to chernobyl was accompanied by an enormous fire which produced a huge plume of hot air carrying radioactivity right up into the stratosphere and that radioactivity was then carried all over the planet by stratospheric wins i think that i can't think of a mechanism that would distribute radioactivity on that kind of scale from anything that could possibly happen at fukushima but we have heard that they have already had some fires including a fire in a fuel pond when which the cooling apparently failed and any kind of any kind of heat source like that will at least produced some kind of updraft to lift some radioactivity of some kind into the into the upper atmosphere into the into into

the wind where it can be carried some distance and obviously they're lost in fact play i read about the fire in which direction the wind blows the lid but what what what are the chances that a radioactive cloud could reach russia from japan. i think very low i think very low for one thing the prevailing wind is not in that direction and for another thing as i say i can't think of a mechanism that would lift a significant amount of radioactivity high enough for it to travel that kind of distance so i don't think i don't think there's any really any reason for concern. for russia or for north america for that reason japan is very unfavorable geographically in terms of us quake and yes the japanese have chosen to build a lot of nuclear power stations paper that house supplying nuclear energy do you think this will change the attitude to nuclear power in japan and take it is down to there have been of course there's been quite

a substantial body of opinion in japan including among c's maula just that building nuclear plants anywhere in japan is not a good idea my personal feeling is that building nuclear plants anywhere is not a good idea for basically economic reasons they're very expensive they tend to be unreliable they are a kind of electricity which is very inflexible and difficult for an electricity system to use because you can lose a thousand megawatts in two minutes and one way in another i have never been persuaded that the economic case for nuclear power is especially convincing and in recent years of course that has been the major controversy about nuclear power investment all over the world private investors do not want to spend money on nuclear plants for quite understandable reasons they don't think they could get their money back but now the safety issue has come back again and that will complicate things even further and of course we haven't had a big nuclear accident really since general right since nine hundred eighty six and

so that people have been achieving nuclear power is becoming safe while a well at least it's perfectly there but i think a much more important factor is that until quite recently nobody has built any nuclear plants and not in the west there have been no. no nuclear plants ordered in the us for example since one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and since then and every plate ordered since the one nine hundred seventy four has been canceled up until the last couple of years when there is suddenly begun to be an great deal of u.s. government taxpayers' money on offer as subsidies for construction of new nuclear plants and even that is not persuading the companies in the us to build them so be the reason that people have not been objecting to nuclear power her past twenty years is that nobody has been building them so now you are going to get a situation which i think mit might turn into a rerun of the kind of controversies of the first generation of nuclear plants in

the late sixties and seventies when the public was deeply unhappy about a lot of these plans and we may well find that happens again. thank you very much. sports is political and least we don't often even notice especially on the level of culture where our ideas and attitudes as a society are shaped. when it. comes over the ties between professional football in the u.s. military have existed since the start of the n.f.l. back in one thousand spiny that relationship pro meant slaves during world war two and today that bond is stronger than ever and a lot of fear and trying to know if it can all can all kill kill everyone trying to kill a little bit of recent history is taught us the sports it's never just something

that we just sit back and mock the sports always had an important social function and the history of american sports is no different. to the first creed remove the old cold a clear cut of the second the explosives are used to allow us to go deeper than the fear that. hurt the remainder is done machinery. and finally the fundamental choice is devotion to invalid feel. if. it. is eve and it's a good. indeed

. top stories this hour on r.t. the crisis at the fukushima power plant in japan worsens as reports say a partial nuclear meltdown is on the way or the country struggles to tackle the damage caused by the earthquake the official death toll has risen to over four thousand as for the survivors below zero temperatures are compounding the nightmare for over half a million people left displaced. as radiation levels continue to rise japanese authorities claim there's no imminent threat to people's health but the country's track record of covering up possible problems makes many official version of events . in libya pro-government forces are taking more land from the rebels while the un is set to discuss imposing a no fly zone over the country

a measure of opposed by most states a lot of back with more developments more news for you in around fifteen minutes from now in the meantime kate is next with the sports news. hello welcome to the sports news thank you for joining me and here are the headlines all steam ahead latif rushing to the k h l semifinals following a battering fight baldwin at home to deny their ego. loss i'm advantaged chelsea are two goals for the good against craven hagan ahead of their champions league second leg while it's all square which means they are. staying on beat spotlight grace themselves by axe in the return leg of the europa league last sixteen three days after the shock russian league opening defeat. but first let's start with a continental hockey playoffs and locomotives have become the first side to reach

the gaar in cup semifinals the row men edgington i'm a reader in overtime to go through the men from yaroslavl battled back to goals time to force an extra trained aleksandar kalyani and yet equally important goal in the fifteen minutes of his securing an unassailable four one lead and respect of seven series so also be dispersed could have joined them in the summer finals if they spurned an early lead to lose three one to atlanta home ice however it still scarred the world better place for grass leaving their side three to. four go now and chelsea have a great chance of making friday's champions league quarter final draw as they take on pavement hagan at stamford bridge with a two away goal cushion for the first leg nicolas anelka is bracing denmark has given the blues a strong advantage and the french will return to the starting line up along with didier drogba and like torres on the bench luis is ineligible so his lab evanovich partners john terry and central defense manager carlo ancelotti says he won't be taking part in taken lightly even though they never wanted england in this

tournament. the world would be very bored with the move on. file of the champions league you're going to have to play a lot of out there. when i get is a good team with good work and is a sure bet you would be ok we use. this time to prepare well just be interesting for was. brought up on the show now i want them. well me law copenhagen center back make out and some sun starts off by becoming a lower back injury a full back the demick prospect is suspended if all those people would give the visit as much of a chance in london i think they can manage a study so back in the tice compromise i could be decided on whether scores first. it's so easy to say that it's down to being in there. which of the team to score the first goal if we score the first goal would change the. psychology of the game . is obviously different and we have been in this situation

once before and then we have been to nearly nonstop dumbs so we are going for it well elsewhere rail madrid are taking only are the bad teams drew one one of the first leg and rail will be poking some revenge having been knocked out by the on the stage last year christiane i would i'll just start after two games and then just i play on the protocol by returning to france to be alongside sonny could there are stored in midfield like a stone saying ring him he's going to be consequential playing for nine years says both sides what is the real question. i think the question applies competition does not call competition everybody knows that. after the match one team goes through another team goes home everybody knows that the next rounds one team will play another team we watch on t.v. and that's. the pressure that applies to these. who does not. know culture is

moving to the europa league now where three russian clubs in spite of tax sky and sea need will be battling to try to get into the last eight on thursday spotlight have the best chance of all three after winning von miller tired of the first leg that has controlled most of that game but still travel to the luzhniki stadium with and with one away goal deficit red and whites haven't won in moscow in the last three european fiction just having lost twice until once however starts i will be eager to present strong performance after the last thing on a demolition of our stock in the league opener last monday. psychological exuded play that restored and the one who is going to play against a world apart is we're going to field a lot of players who didn't play it will still be totally lost so i don't think that to keep could jump of their moves that's why i don't know anybody who feels all the structure to go ahead of the game has got better but our neighbors want to scar and the army men suffered a dramatic defeat in their first leg and also the moscow side have plenty of

chances but didn't manage to get by one of his goalkeeper. has had a warning to advantage the head of the second flash meanwhile both say star striker is barred by love and saying to him we are all expected to shine although just to find something you can shave it she's actually to espouse leading goalscorer with paul strikes to his name so far but i don't find it is it's the same petersburg's i pay my way from the outside it's a twenty eight with a disappointing three in those if it was the first day nevertheless the defending russian chanting as manager of the china is confident his side will be able to overturn this death as it can strike excited from the crowd that is under pressure cough up in training after injury problems and to meet with all eyes to score early in the match. opponents i x. haven't had the greatest preparation has those days clash their star forward to maryland's three irani missed their final training session because the serbian strike up was stuck passport control was because of problems and you don't know.

point somebody faced a tough task to get to spend time must decide they couldn't be couldn't create templates however that task may become even harder after nearly instantly money was supposed to see time to some experimental training session as he was trying to get past possible control of most crucially need to airports serbia has a visa waiver program to ration silly nonny has an all cost which calls for hold out what you have to do as a professional you have to be focused and not letting dissuade you from. it is a shoo in especially for making a point. before there's. already started. and. hopefully. you will feel if you go didn't already have enough problems or who played on the losing side both played so i actually champions league quarter final against sponsored nine hundred ninety eight he'll also have to do with my

goalkeeper martin still can burge number one broke his bum and will be out of action for at least six weeks of course the one of the best goalkeepers seems a. chip of course so we have a lot of confidence. in europe. but for the rest everybody. only you know what you're. still a good lord for the season. for us and for killing everybody sucker additionally we also have to contend with spam tax casting peach it could be it doesn't believe that hinders me but more important is finding the back of the needs something that i expect plenty of chances do in the first leave unfortunately then they were unable to find a weakness and you can hopefully we're going to create chances you have been before normally and if you create the last week real good chances maybe ten a half to two chances show that it's

a lark and. you know if you're only guitar for do it. normally a european level means that you have created a lot of changes and i'm confident. now will suit girls of the sponsor called a single lead from the first leg out i actually really really battle for the dutch tried and lost mr basically almost two months ago will be hoping they can finally manage to get their first win against a rush. to turn out spots like a room with a great chance of making the last eight opera find one their big around a week ago or they're up against an iron side have been in good form recently and of only lost twice since the start of the new year and frankly worlds team showed we can go in amsterdam more than capable of creating chances have to start taking them if they don't have any chance of making a quarter finals. now with the clock ticking down to the london games next summer got hold of russia's olympic committee says the country's targeting that's not true

overall performance in the play and sound as you call stress that russia has been gaining ground in many sports recently he singled out medal which disciplines such as weightlifting fencing swimming and rowing the russian being a traditional stronghold in boxing gymnastics track and field events china and the usa are the usual contenders in terms of dominating the games but is adamant russia is in the right form of working closely with lot of the winter games in vancouver and then in russia only manage a disappointing places medals table in canada last five years. run fine is a great is an australia stretch their own didn't run in the world cup the thirty four matches after crushing canada by seven wickets in bangalore to go top of group a kind of the one that australia chose to bat first and made a promising start from to figure out that self he completed his half century of just thirty seven boys however the oldest overcame the resistance and bowled and minimize the two hundred eleven for those remaining on the defending world

champions easily overturn the deficit going to themselves a place in quarter finals opener shane watson with ninety four and brad haddin made eighty eight chase down joseph runs to strike easily reach two hundred twelve for three hour kind of this campaign came to an end run win from six matches. and that's all scorsese by for. sure is the same or similar do you think is there a line in the mark when the arab world power of people's hopes and the deadly reactions of tyrant are journeys in egypt leading the way for our libya.

hungry for the full simply we've got it first hand the biggest issues get the human voice face to face with the news makers on the potty. first. see.

that. live. if. russia would be soon which bryson if you mean about someone from finest impression is.